


The Lost Girls

by Comicbooklovergreen



Series: More than One Kind of Soulmate [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Carol (2015), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: 5o;s Power Couples, And Trios, Crossover, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Found Familes, Multi, Polyamory, Stegginelli, Wine makes Therese feel naughty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 10:23:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8158790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Comicbooklovergreen/pseuds/Comicbooklovergreen
Summary: Sequel to 'Playdates.' Carol, Therese and Rindy have dinner with Captain America and the mothers of his child. Therese reveals prior history with Cap, and Rindy couldn't care less about Cap, but thinks Angie is the biggest celebrity ever.Two unconventional families form an unbreakable bond. Tracing a friendship and a family through the years.





	

“I’m not sure how I feel about this. Are we even allowed to drink in front of Captain America?”

Carol gave her an amused smile, gloved hands steady on the wheel of the Packard. “Well, there’s a holiday in his honor but as far as I know, no law against drinking in his presence.”

Glaring as best she could, Therese switched the bottle of wine in her lap from one hand to the other. “Pardon me for not knowing the rules of dining with a national icon. Some of us weren’t gifted with those fancy etiquette classes.”

Carol made a face, one hand drifting to squeeze Therese’s thigh lightly. “No gift, sweetheart, trust me. Anyway, Harge has never told one of his service stories without copious amounts of alcohol being involved somewhere, so I think we’re safe. Why, though?” Carol lowered her voice. “Worried about having too much, getting a bit naughty in front of Captain America?”

Therese swatted at Carol’s hand on her leg, making no real effort to move it. It was warm and familiar, solid reality in a surreal situation. They were having dinner with Captain America and his two wives, neither of whom he was married to.

A small noise brought Therese’s attention to the rearview mirror. Rindy sat quietly in the back, paging through a new picture book Carol picked up for her. Calm now, Therese had no doubt things would change once Rindy met Lizzie again.

Therese wondered if Rindy recognized any of this, knew at all how close they were to her old home. Their new, famous friends lived closer to the Ridgewood house than the Madison Avenue apartment, and Therese had joked repeatedly about Carol being neighbors with a hero all those years and not knowing it. Carol’s response? “Don’t tell Harge, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

(“Commute’s a drag,” Angie had cheerfully explained, “but, privacy, you know?” And Therese had nodded as if she did).

As far as she knew, Harge remained ignorant. Rindy barely knew or cared who Captain America was, she just liked Lizzie and thought her parents (all three of them) were nice. Therese liked to picture Harge’s face when he found out his deceitful, deviant ex-wife was on a first name basis with the country’s favorite son.

“I met him, you know,” she said, watching the scenery pass.

Carol’s fingers, which had been drawing lazy, idle patterns on her thigh, ceased their movement. “Met who?”

“Steve. Captain America. I met him, before the park.”

Carol looked at her quickly, then back at the road. “When?”

Therese shrugged at the intensity of Carol’s interest. “As a kid. Before he became…really him, I suppose. When he was still making those old serials, touring everywhere. He came to the Home, visited with the children, took pictures.”

Home, what she always said in front of Rindy It sounded better than orphanage. Therese wondered if Rindy would even be able to grasp that concept, children with no parents to love them, parents who dropped them off and forgot about them. Rindy, whose parents fought so hard over her.

“Am I to understand,” Carol said, “that there’s a photo of you as a child, posing next to that man in those ridiculous tights, and I haven’t seen it?”

“No, you’re not to understand that because it’s not true. The photo doesn’t exist.”

“You passed on having your picture taken with Captain America?”

Therese shrugged again.

“Why?”

“You’ll miss the turn,” Therese said without answering.

Carol swore quietly under her breath, taking her hand from Therese’s leg to make the required change in navigation. They found themselves on a semi-isolated road, boasting only one house. It was a nice place, looked spacious, but smaller than Carol’s old home in Ridgewood.

“Don’t tell Harge,” Carol muttered quietly for the second time. “He’d have a field day.”

Therese wondered when it was that Carol thought she might have all these conversations with Harge, since he’d yet to hold her gaze for more than a second or utter her name. She also thought it likely Harge would have a stroke, not a field day, if he knew of this engagement. Voicing neither thought, Therese sat forward in her seat as Carol pulled into a circular driveway.

“Hmmm.”

Therese mimicked Carol’s soft hum, looked a question at her.

“Surprisingly ordinary, don’t you think?”

Ordinary was relative. It was nicer than anyplace Therese could’ve imagined living before Carol. “What were you expecting? Army barracks draped in flags? Armed guards? A couple of bald eagles circling overhead?”

Carol swatted Therese’s arm with one hand, killed the engine with the other. Therese grinned. She’d been mocked about the wine question, and turnabout was fair play.

Carol held Rindy’s hand as they approached the door. Rindy grabbed Therese’s free hand, the one not holding the wine. She’d done it a few times before, but each one sent a pleasant shock through Therese’s system.

“You remember the rules about being a guest,” Carol said. “’Please’ and ‘thank you.’ Listen to Lizzie’s parents.”

“I know,” Rindy said. “Promise, Mommy.”

“Good girl.”

Carol smiled in a way Therese only ever saw when Rindy was there. Like always, she wished to capture that look, save it for all the times she couldn’t have it. She’d left her camera in the car though, remembering Peggy’s initial reaction to it.

She didn’t have time to dwell on the missed opportunity. Before Carol could ring the bell, the door swung open to reveal a smiling Angie Martinelli.

“Jersey! Shutter! Hey, pumpkin,” she said, bending briefly to address Rindy. “Come on then, get in out of the cold.”

Angie, true to the last few times Therese met her, was a whirlwind. Her first words to Therese, first after bestowing the nickname, had been “I love watching new ones play Guess the Mistress.”

And that, as Carol would say, was that.

Angie took the wine, led them through the house, talking the whole time.

“We had a bigger place,” she said, and Therese shared a small, secret smile with Carol, “but there was too much Howard Stark there. In every sense of the word. You go to play hide and seek with the kid, you find all sorts of stuff not fit for human eyes. Meanwhile, Lizzie’s still tucked away in some room I’ve never even seen before.”

As if her name was a summons, Lizzie appeared at the head of the staircase they were passing. With a grin and the usual enthusiastic call of Rindy’s name, she descended the stairs, both feet on each step before moving to the next. The modified process took longer than it would for an adult, but Therese was still impressed at the relative speed of it. Angie? Impressed wasn’t the word for her reaction.

“English!” Angie called up the stairs. “You wanna rein your kid in? We’re being bad parents again.”

“ _My_ kid now, is she?” Peggy’s voice drifted over them from somewhere above.

“She doesn’t get it from me.”

The sound of Peggy’s heels on hardwood preceded her descent. “Summer of ’46,” she said with a smile for them, a different one for Angie. “Griffith fire escape.”

This meant nothing to Therese, but obviously something for Angie, who immediately told Peggy to shut up. Therese thought, as she had the first time this happened in her presence, that Angie must be the only person in the world who could say that to Peggy and remain conscious afterward.

“How come I don’t have a special name?” Rindy asked suddenly, pausing a rushed, giggling conversation with Lizzie.

Carol frowned. “What do you mean, darling?”

Rindy frowned right back, pointing at those she addressed. “You’re Jersey,” she said, starting with her mother, “and you’re Shutter,” she indicated Therese. “And you’re English, and Lizzie’s daddy is Soldier, so how come I’m not anyone?”

Peggy answered the question with the gravitas it deserved.

“Of course you’re someone, someone very important. Angie takes her nicknames very, very seriously. Once you have one, you’ll have it forever and ever.”

“Really?” Rindy asked, eyes wide.

Peggy nodded. “So she has to get them exactly right, you see. Sometimes that means taking her time a bit.”

“Really?” Rindy repeated, looking at Angie this time.”

Angie confirmed this with the appropriate mix of warmth and seriousness, adding that sometimes people like Rindy and Lizzie had to grow into their nicknames.

“I don’t got one either,” Lizzie said with a shrug and her seemingly permanent grin. “’Cause Mommy said she almost had to go to war again just picking my regular one.”

“I did indeed.” Peggy mock-shuddered and Lizzie laughed. Angie promised to give proper consideration to Rindy’s future title.

They found Steve in the kitchen, chopping vegetables with a speed that was both enviable and alarming to Therese. He greeted the guests with the same easy smile Therese was starting to get used to, though she still struggled to merge this man, the man who chopped vegetables and tied his daughter’s shoe at the park and seemed to know without looking where the kids were and what they were doing, with the man in spangles who appeared bigger than life on the movie screens when she was young, who was all anyone could talk about a few years ago when he came back from the dead. Who’d looked, in Therese’s recollection, absolutely terrified of children when they’d swarmed him during his visit to the school that’d doubled as her home.

Merging Steve and Captain America would be taxing enough, but Peggy and Angie were there too. Fitting them all together in her mind, puzzling out their dynamic, was one of the most complicated, confusing, fascinating things Therese had ever attempted. She’d seen them in various combinations over the last few weeks, rarely all three though. Four, counting Lizzie.

“Work,” Peggy would say casually, with that accent Therese wasn’t at all enthralled by. No, that had been a passing fixation, nothing more.

Therese was snapped back to the present by Peggy asking about her work at the paper. It wasn’t like the first time she’d done this, Peggy asked her as a friend, not a potential spy, a paparazzi. Therese answered while Angie set the table. At one point she stood on tiptoe to get something from a high shelf and Steve reached up to help her, teased her about it. She waved a fork menacingly in his direction, and Therese marveled at how _free_ it all was, how they were around her.

Not that the trust had come instantly. After one of their meetings at the park Steve and Peggy had accompanied them back to Madison Avenue. Ostensibly so Lizzie could borrow a certain toy from Rindy that simply had to change hands that very day, though Therese knew, knew at a glance that Carol did as well, that there was more to it. She and Carol both figured that they’d been investigated. Seemed par for the course when you befriended a superhero and someone who did…whatever highly classified things Peggy did. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, not after Waterloo and the detective, but it didn’t create the sickening feeling Therese would’ve expected.

Before they sat down, Peggy poured the wine Therese brought. She mentioned, couldn’t help it, that she was sure they’d had better, being friends with Howard Stark. Angie waved and made a face.

“Don’t even start. That fancy schmancy grape juice has nothin on a good bottle of Schnapps. Shandy, if you don’t have that.”

Angie seemed personally affronted when Therese admitted to having tasted neither. Then her eyes glinted and she promised Therese that this hideous oversight would be remedied. On a night when the children weren’t so nearby, so awake.

Carol smirked in a way that was strangely similar to that glint Angie had. Therese kicked her (lightly) under the table before she could accuse Therese of being a lightweight in front of their friends.

Rindy looked happily stunned when told she’d be eating with everyone, not at a separate table with Lizzie. She was used to the formal gatherings at her grandparents’ home. Angie scoffed at this, saying that a dinner party without at least one child hurling a breadstick at another child simply wasn’t civilized. Then she told Lizzie to behave herself at the table.

Her earlier nerves aside, dinner was a surprisingly easy affair. Conversation flowed and Therese didn’t feel that familiar pressure to talk throughout. Because of Peggy, probably, and that first meeting when they’d watched the kids more than anything, without the need to fill every silence. It helped that there were others (Angie most of all) who were more than capable of keeping things from stalling.

It also didn’t hurt that Angie would casually refill Therese’s glass each time it became less than half full.

Therese noticed with slight concern that Rindy would get distracted every time Angie did that, sat forward to top off the drink. Rindy’s eyes would go to Angie, linger. A few times she seemed to frown at Angie’s light green sweater. A few times Therese thought Carol was about to scold her for staring, but then Lizzie would get her attention again and the moment would pass.

Or the wine had simply gone to her head and Therese was imagining all of it. Either way, it wasn’t worth dwelling on.

The ease of good food, good wine and simple conversation had Therese thinking back to when things finally made sense with these people, allowed this night to happen. The tale came in bits and pieces over several weeks, with Therese well aware that the more crucial parts hadn’t come until after Peggy and Steve visited their apartment. If they were looking for proof that she and Carol weren’t a pair of evil spies, Therese assumed they’d found it.

 _“You’d be surprised,” Angie said when Therese had mustered the courage to joke about this. They’d been sitting in a quiet spot at the park, a rare day when each member of both families was there. Peggy, Carol and Lizzie were feeding ducks by the pond while Rindy talked Steve’s ear off about trains. Therese had apologized for that, feeling strangely embarrassed since it was sort of her doing, but Steve just laughed. Laughed in a way few men ever did because he wasn’t laughing_ at _her._

_While the others were occupied, Angie had explained quietly but casually about their situation, as if it was nothing at all. Peggy had met, worked with and fallen in love with Steve during the war. Steve saved the world, died doing it. Angie and Peggy became friends, then roommates._

_“Roommates.” Angie had said. “Like you and Carol, right?”_

_Right. Just like her and Carol._

_Steve came back, but Peggy had already moved on with someone else. Someone Angie didn’t mention again, didn’t elaborate on at all. Peggy still loved Steve though, who wouldn’t? In fact, it turned out Angie liked him quite a bit. Liked him enough that Lizzie came out of it. Liked him about as much as she liked living with English, and come on, why end a good thing just because some man strolled back into the picture? The arrangement wasn’t exactly public knowledge, but it wasn’t a secret either, Angie said. What was there to be secretive about? She was just a gal who’d been introduced to a man by another gal, who happened to be her best friend and roommate._

_By that point in the story, Angie hadn’t even tried to say ‘roommate’ in a normal way. She’d been referring to Peggy as the wicked stepmother when the woman in question returned, along with Carol. Lizzie had gone off to join Rindy and her father._

_Peggy had stared between Angie and Therese for a long moment, long enough to make Therese squirm inside as she pieced together everything that was said, everything that wasn’t, thinking she wasn’t meant to know any of it._

_“Oh shut up, English,” Angie said, though Peggy hadn’t spoken._

_And then Peggy smiled and shook her head, and that was that._

_Therese had related the tale to Carol later that day, and they’d come to the same conclusions. Especially since Angie’s parting remark, delivered with quick hugs to both of them had been, “Ain’t it nice, ladies? Knowin there are people out there weirder than you?”_

Therese considered all of it as she watched them interact, half-listened to their conversation. She remembered the headlines, Captain America going into the sea. She remembered the other children crying, some of the nuns too. She’d lost her father by then, death wasn’t an unknown entity, but still. She’d seen this man up close; he’d held some of her friends in his arms. For him to be gone, it didn’t feel right.

Sipping from her wine, Therese watched Peggy laugh at something Carol said. If Steve’s loss had affected her so much, what must it have done to Peggy? She and Steve behaved as if they’d never spent a day apart, but obviously that wasn’t so. Therese had four months away from Carol, four months she’d prefer not to think of, let alone repeat. And even then (when she wasn’t mad as hell and cursing her for ever walking into Frankenberg’s), Therese could content herself with the thought that Carol was happy. Happy enough, since she’d have Rindy. She’d never had to confront a world where Carol simply didn’t exist anymore, where she never would again. To live that way for months on end, for years…

Therese couldn’t imagine loving anyone but Carol. Ever. She supposed that was how everyone felt until their love was gone, until they found another. Plenty of people did, Peggy included. And, Therese decided, it would be very easy to fall in love with Angie Martinelli. It was damn near impossible not to like her, and wasn’t that how these things started, liking someone enough to realize you might love them?

She couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like for these three when Steve came back. Whatever they’d done to get through it though, it must’ve worked, they must make it work. Therese couldn’t imagine (and didn’t she think that a lot around these people?) sharing Carol with anyone, Rindy being the clear exception. She still battled the occasional pang of jealousy when Carol and Abby would get engrossed in some shared memory, or some private joke Therese would never really be part of. She wondered if it was ever like that for these three, how they dealt with it if it was.

No, Therese couldn’t imagine living the way they did. But watching them, watching their daughter, she also couldn’t imagine them living any other way.

It made her feel closer to Carol somehow, being near them, seeing how easy they were with each other. Made her aware of how lucky she was that she’d never lost Carol the way Peggy lost Steve, never had to rebuild her life to the same extent, then tear it all down again to make something better. She was more aware of her love for Carol in that moment, more conscious of it, and it was all because of these people, this friendship.

And probably because of the wine Angie was nice enough to keep pouring, but that was secondary.

Therese found Carol’s knee under the table, squeezing lightly. Because she loved Carol, and because she could. If they got caught (a better than average chance of that since they were dining with a spy) what did it matter? They wouldn’t be judged for it, not here.

Carol’s eyes flashed briefly. She glanced at Therese, never losing the thread of what she was saying to Steve. Her lips curved in a soft, quiet smile. Therese was sober enough to assume her own grin was more obvious as Carol found her hand, gripped it under the table. Therese basked in the simple contact, Carol’s touch bringing her out of her thoughts in time to hear an exchange between Lizzie and Rindy, happily seated next to each other and apparently trading tales of parental occupations.

“My daddy invests things,” Rindy said.

“What’s that mean?”

Lizzie’s question earned a shrug. “Don’t know, but it sounds boring whenever him and Grandpa talk about it.”

“My daddy hits bad people. And signs autographs.”

“What’s an autograph?” Rindy asked.

“Lizzie.” Steve was blushing now and Therese found it terribly amusing.

“That reminds me,” Carol said. “It turns out Therese missed out on a photo op with you a few years back.”

Carol gifted her with a very specific smile as she revealed this. The one that meant she knew exactly what she was doing, which in these situations meant making Therese just uncomfortable enough for Carol to be entertained.

Therese wasn’t sure who was more embarrassed, her or Steve. Carol told them what Therese had, left out the part about the school she’d attended doubling as an orphanage. Angie and Peggy looked interested, amused. Steve drank more wine at a faster pace, though it didn’t seem to do anything.

“So,” Angie said. “My best guy here, and he wasn’t interesting enough to want to snap a picture with?” “No,” Therese said quickly. “I mean, no, it wasn’t that at all, I just…” She wasn’t sober enough for this, it wasn’t fair.

“Angie,” Peggy said. “Stop being awful.” Peggy’s eyes found Therese’s. “Ignore her, she’s just being awful. This is why we don’t have dinner parties.”

“We don’t have dinner parties because you’d only invite people you work with, and I’d rather stop in at the Griffith and face the wrath of Fry again than entertain those bores all night.”

Therese wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what the wrath of fry was, or how it related to this conversation. It didn’t matter, since Angie was now talking about getting Steve’s old uniform (“The classic model, tights and all”) out of the basement and organizing another photo op, an idea the children thoroughly supported.

“You were ambushed enough with the kids who were already there,” Therese told Steve at one point while he blushed and groaned through talk of Angie’s plan. “I thought it’d be kinder if you had one less to deal with.”

“Then you were a good friend to me long before I knew it.”

Therese smiled at the dry remark. The explanation was half-truthful, and she was seeing the man more and more as Steve as opposed to Cap, so she only felt a little bad about fibbing. The whole truth of it was that she’d felt the other kids deserved more time with him, needed it more. _She_ wasn’t an orphan, not really. She’d still kept the hope that her mother would come back for her, like she always promised in her letters, her visits. Both of which were coming less and less by then, but Therese had been sure. Her mother would return for her and they’d see Captain America next time, at a show in New York probably.

Her mother never came back and Cap died, and then he didn’t die, and now she was sitting at his table being embarrassed by one of his lovers. Life was funny that way.

“You’re Peter Pan!”

And that was a funnily effective way of being yanked from her thoughts.

It was Rindy who yelled, Rindy who never yelled at the table. Rindy who was definitely staring at Angie now, Therese hadn’t imagined it. Rindy who looked as if Christmas had come early this year.

“Rindy,” Carol said, though it was less an admonishment than Therese thought Carol meant it to be. Carol seemed too surprised and confused to pull it off. “Honey, you shouldn’t—”

“But _Mommy_. Lizzie’s mommy is Peter Pan and you never said!”

Therese really needed to sit further from Angie if they had wine again. She was usually rather skilled at following Rindy’s thoughts, frenetic as they sometimes were, but she really wasn’t sober enough for this.

Angie though, Angie looked pleased as anything and was no longer on about putting Steve in tights and having Therese straddle his back. “Well would you look at that?” Angie said, a wide smile gracing her features. “Soldier, you ain’t the only one worthy of some recognition around here.”

“Never said I was,” Steve replied, voice brimming with fondness.

“Oh yeah,” Lizzie said with a shrug. “Daddy’s Captain America and Mama’s Peter Pan sometimes. Mama, can we have dessert?”

“See?” Rindy asked before Angie could say anything. “Mommy! She was Peter Pan, all in green, remember? My birthday present. You were my birthday present!” Rindy was nothing less than star-struck as she gazed at Angie.

“Aww sweetie, you poor kid.” The pleased smile on Angie’s face dimmed not at all as she said this.

“Lucky kid,” Steve corrected.

Peggy smacked his arm while finishing off the last of her pasta. “Stop sucking up, you’ll make me look bad.”

Therese exchanged a stunned look with Carol, finally understanding. They’d taken Rindy to the theater for the first time several months earlier, a birthday gift after she begged and begged and insisted on being old enough to sit still and behave herself. Rindy was utterly mesmerized when she realized Peter was being played by a woman.

By Ange.

Angie, who now wore that lovely green sweater.

Well. That explained Rindy’s staring off and on for the last hour.

“You were wonderful,” Carol declared. “I can’t believe-“

Angie rolled her eyes, still smiling. “So wonderful you didn’t remember me at all? Couldn’t have left much of an impression.”

Therese shook her head, though the remark wasn’t directed at her. It’d been just the opposite really. She remembered being sucked in by the familiar story, the songs. She hadn’t been thinking of it as a story, in fact, of Angie as an actress.

Also, she may have spent a good portion of the show watching Carol instead. Watching Carol, who was watching Rindy. Rindy was so enthralled, and Rindy happy made Carol a special kind of happy, a special kind of _joyous_ Therese knew she’d see more of if things were different, if Rindy were with them more.

Therese tried to explain this, part of it anyway, to Angie. Angie carried on for a bit about being a hack of an actress, forgotten the moment she left the stage. She couldn’t maintain it though, not with Rindy asking question after question about the production. Mainly, she wanted to know about the flying scenes.

“You can’t fly,” Rindy told Steve without malice.

“Nope,” Steve said with an amiable shrug. “That’s just Angie.”

And that exchange summed it up rather perfectly, Therese realized. Because while Rindy hadn’t batted an eye at Captain America, Peter Pan was an entirely different matter. Lizzie seemed unfazed by Rindy’s sudden shift in attention (after Peggy brought her dessert anyway), but Carol tried to apologize for the bombardment of questions, which had Angie chucking.

“You kiddin? It’s great, knowing someone cared. What’s the point otherwise, right? And clearly this one doesn’t appreciate her mother’s talent.”

Angie nodded at Lizzie, who didn’t glance up from the cake she was inhaling.

“Give her time yet, darling,” Peggy said, eating at an only slightly slower pace than Lizzie. “Appreciating the arts takes time.”

“We brought her to rehearsals for the Peter gig once,” Angie said, eyes on Therese and Carol. “The good Captain here had to haul her out because she kept yelling ‘Mama’ and laughing at me every time I hit the stage. Trust me, Jersey, I don’t mind the questions.”

She really didn’t. By the time dinner was finished, she was calling Rindy and Lizzie her Lost Girls (Lizzie’s enthusiasm for the whole thing seemed to increase with the amount of sugar she consumed) and planning out costumes for both. Steve was commissioned to sketch out designs.

Not long after that, the children were running around in scavenged material from the basement (material originally scavenged from various costume departments, Therese guessed) and reenacting the best parts of the play. There were fake swords, mementos from the prop department and Therese lost track of who was meant to be Peter or Hook or anyone, but the details seemed mostly irrelevant. Peggy gave them advice on proper fencing technique, which Therese found terribly fascinating

Around the time Lizzie pretended to stab her father in the back because he was pretending to be an alligator circling the pirate ship they were all meant to be on, Therese decided that she couldn’t bear not having photos of this anymore, so she talked her way out of the action, despite the fact that she was meant to be engaged in some sort of cannon battle with Peggy.

Flush with wine and happiness, the cool air of the night outside was a shock. She hadn’t bothered with a coat, walked fast with her arms crossed over herself to get her camera from the car. She was most of the way there when she heard a door close, then footsteps. Then there were hands draped over her and Carol’s voice was in her ear.

“You’ll freeze,” Carol said, adjusting the coat on her shoulders.

Therese turned, stumbling a little so Carol would tighten her grip. “I’m fine.”

“Now. You’re also a horrible patient when you’re sick, and I’m not risking it.”

Therese glanced at the darkened street with no houses nearby, no prying eyes. With her hands at Carol’s waist, she stepped backward until her back hit the car, leaned against it as she brought her lips to Carol’s.

It was soft and long and when Carol finally ended it, Therese knew but did not care that she must be grinning foolishly.

“Well,” Carol said, thumb grazing Therese’s lower lip. “If that’s what I get for calling you a horrible patient…”

Therese pushed at her shoulder. “This was practicality, me keeping warm so you won’t have to nurse me back to health, since I’m such a horrible patient. Besides,” she added, glancing over Carol’s shoulder at the lights in the windows. “There’s only a few people who could catch us, and I don’t think they’d mind.”

Carol smiled in the dark. “No, no I don’t suppose they would.”

Therese found herself being kissed again, though it was shorter this time. Apparently Rindy and Lizzie were hatching plans to jump from the second floor to the first, recreate those flying scenes. And though Carol was oddly certain they could actually do this under current supervision without getting hurt, she preferred to avoid it if possible. Therese didn’t blame her.

Retrieving her camera, she walked hand in hand with Carol back to the house, the friends, the mayhem inside.

The photos she got that night in Steve Rogers’s home made her forget all about that other photo, the one she’d missed out on with Captain America. These shots, these moments, were far better than that other one ever could’ve been.

 

**Author's Note:**

> For those interested, yes, Angie very well could've been Peter Pan at this time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan_(1954_musical)
> 
> While things in this series are planned out to a certain extent, I'm always anxious to check out prompts. Hit me up on Tumblr if you're so inclined. 
> 
> http://cblgblog.tumblr.com/


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